The virus has disappeared but relief is only temporary: ebola is still out there. Leigh Cowart on how scientists are frantically trying to locate it before another outbreak

There was a certain kind of quiet hopefulness when, in late April this year, the last ebola patient of the West African epidemic – a two-year-old boy – walked out of a treatment facility in Monrovia, Liberia. With the smouldering embers of the outbreak fading, there was cause for celebration. But there remains the impotent fear of the unseen: ebola is still out there, lurking. We just don’t know where it’s hiding or when it will be back.

If we’re going to stop Ebola in the future, we have to find its hiding places. ebola is a zoonotic disease, meaning that it can spread between animals and humans. It burns hot and fast through people.Its ruthless nature means that we are often the end of the line for the virus: a host like us that gets too sick too fast, that dies too quickly, cuts down the virus’s ability to jump into a fresh body. To remain a threat, Ebola needs a safe house in which to lie low and hide.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-the-secret-hideout-of-the-viris-a7339781.html